campaigning

Admittedly, Person County is not an "A" list county in the world of statewide politics. Other counties have more votes, more money and are easier to get to. so it is understandable that we are not overrun with statewide candidates.

But this year we seem to be especially overlooked, ignored even. We have well over 12,000 democrats who vote rather well and are only 30 minutes north of Durham and the I-40 corridor so we are not that far out in the sticks.

What do these NC General Assembly members have in common?

Lucy Allen, Julia Boseman, Linda Coleman, Janet Cowell, Margaret Dickson, Katie Dorsett, Susan Fisher, Alice Graham Underhill, Pricey Harrison, Maggie Jeffus

Yep. They're all women. Very good!!! :)
Yep. They're all relative newcomers to the GA. You know your stuff!!
Yep. They're all well respected progressive Legislators.

But there's something else that links them.

I highly reccomend that everyone take a look over at this diary on kos. The quick summary is that the Edwards campaign is sending DVDs to 70,000 Iowa houses. In the first campaign mailing of the 08 cycle, the Edwards campaign has put a 6 minute introductory video on his Health Care plan together and sent it to the most likely caucus attendees.

Tired of struggling with election software programs that aren't user-friendly, won't speak to each other, or won't print out cleanly? Have a "tech nightmare" to share?

This just popped into my mailbox. I pass it along for your perusal:

Sign the Integration Proclamation

If you work for a progressive organization or campaign, you probably struggle with technology. You probably have multiple databases and tech tools that half-work, but drive you crazy because they don't work together, and do everything you need. You're not alone. Thousands of us have struggled for years with splintered systems that don't get the job done.

If you want the progressive movement to finally have the tools we need to win our campaigns, you should sign The Integration Proclamation. Check it out at IntegrationProclamation.com, and after you've signed it, send it around to your co-workers, colleagues, allies and anyone else who fights for progressive social change.

Integrated? Seamless? Interoperable? They can't mean Democrats.

There has been some talk on the site about the creation of a 100 county strategy for the state in 2008. I have been thinking about it since before the election and I have come up with some ideas. Let me say that I know that I am new to NC so some of my planks are more general and could be (and I believe should be) applied to all states, but I still think that they are good ideas. The second thing is that in my experience working in politics, the majority of what I have done has been field work. This has made me a devoted advocate of field. I truly believe that I dollar spent in field is worth 5 spent on TV ads.

So here is the plan:

1) Hold all current office holders accountable. This includes everything from Dog Catcher up to Gov., Sen., etc.

2) Create, support and help fund local county organizations in every county. Even here in Buncombe there are precincts that do not have leadership. This needs to be fixed in every county in the State.

The dirty campaign ads on tv and radio weren't enough, I guess, so here come the dirty campaign fliers!!!

I'm sure at least fifty-thousand of these have already been sent out all over WNC, so if anyone has seen this already I apologize for the redundancy. Someone sent this to me earlier this morning, and I had to share (click the thumbnails to enlarge):

This is a better recording of the Taylor telephone push poll.